This feels like a good opportunity to tell (or remind) people that something on a rental lease isn't binding just because you signed it, and signing a lease entitles you to tenant privileges even if the lease does not mention them. I did not know these things before the pandemic, and I think the vast majority of people don't, even landlords themselves.
There is a difference between what is written on the lease, and what can actually be enforced. The lease is not just one giant legal document. It's a series of hundreds or even thousands of individual components.
Let me give you my real-life example:
A few years ago, I signed a lease for a rental in California. Two things (clauses? not sure what the legal term is) in the lease are the key points for my anecdote:
- A lease break fee equal to half a month of rent
- Something about tenants being responsible for any legal fees incurred by the landlord/property owner
I broke my lease, and the half month of rent was taken out of my deposit. I moved out a day early. My landlord had immediately found a new tenant who wanted to move in that day, so it worked out for both of us.
Then my landlord did two things which really upset me and led to me spending ~20 hours over the next month or two reading about real estate laws and consulting multiple lawyers.
- He charged me for lightbulbs that had been burnt out when I first moved in. I replaced them with my own, then swapped them back. I told him this, and he still took it out of my deposit.
- He did not refund my deposit for nearly a month. When he did, it was $150 short of the reduced amount that I had expected. He didn't have an explanation for why, and wouldn't send it.
This led me to lots of googling, and discovery of the following:
1. The idea of a "lease break fee" does not exist in California landlord/tenant laws. It is not legally enforceable. If a lease has one, it doesn't actually mean anything. If I had broken my lease without the landlord's permission, he would not have been entitled to any damages, since he filled the vacancy immediately at an equal or greater monthly rate.
2. Landlords must return a portion of the security deposit within 21 days, with itemizations and deductions. If nothing is returned within 21 days, they must return the full amount, even if deductions are justified. If the matter goes to court, the concept of "treble damages" comes into play. A tenant could get up to 3x their deposit back, depending on how the judge feels (probably a gross oversimplification of small claims, but maybe not).
3. The clause about being responsible for legal fees actually goes both ways. My landlord would have been responsible for my legal fees on top of treble damages if we went to court. There is no way to know this based on just reading the contract, and not having an understanding of laws as they are on the books AND legal precedents for prior similar cases in California.
My landlord did not budge on returning my money when I texted him summaries of the above and links to evidence. He did budge after receiving a letter from a lawyer explaining everything in a more threatening tone.
I was ultimately not out anything but time, since I have a legal plan that I pay for on an annual basis. This was the perfect situation to use it, but it was still more work.
I do want to note something about the legal fees clause. I am pretty sure I am the first tenant who ever pushed back on it to my landlord. I don't know what the term for this is, but that clause has a very strong implication. At first glance, it seems to say "even if you're in the right, if you take me (the landlord) to court, you will have to pay for my lawyer, whether I win or lose".
This is what I thought it meant, and I wonder how many tenants who have been wronged in the past see a clause like that, and it just eliminates any ideas they may have about trying to enforce their tenant rights because they see it as financially impossible.
If I had to pay out of pocket for lawyer consultations and the letter, it wouldn't have really been worth it either. I would have roughly broke even. I would have done it anyways, though. I hope my former landlord will get deposits back to people on time in the future. Though I suppose he might not be willing to let people break their leases anymore, either.
I'm pretty sure he was overcharging on utilities, but I didn't push it at the time. I've been considering reporting him to the IRS because he illegally declared the home as his primary residence while not residing in it, which I found out from the title report. I'm not sure if anything would come out of it. I would bet a limb that he wasn't reporting any of his rental income.
Which leads me to a final thought: leases in California primarily benefit the tenant. You should never be afraid to break one IF the following is true: you know the landlord will be able to fill the vacancy if they put actual effort into it (they will need to prove as such to collect from you if they want to be lazy or spiteful), and the amount of time and money you would potentially spend in the worst case is less than whatever you would be responsible for in a scenario where they don't fill your vacancy, and they convince the judge that they tried really hard and they just couldn't do it (unlikely).
> He charged me for lightbulbs that had been burnt out when I first moved in. I replaced them with my own, then swapped them back. I told him this, and he still took it out of my deposit.
That is some combination of organization and willingness to spend time really sweating the details that far exceeds my own.
“What’s in this box?” “Oh, that’s my catalog of burned out light bulbs.” “Why do you have a catalog of burned out lightbulbs?” “Well, I’m not going to live here forever!”
Hah, my bulbs aren't burned out. They're also not manufactured anymore and would cost $80 to replace based on Amazon and eBay prices. I've had them for close to eight years now and have brought them with me to lots of places.
I've never looked at title reports, but it's fairly common for people to buy a unit, live in it for X years, move out, buy another place and then rent out their old place. I also don't remember about making specific declarations that certain units are my 'primary residence for the year' on my tax return ever. Did the title report say he bought it as a primary residence? Did their original mortgage continue as a 'primary residence mortgage' on the unit. That would make sense then and he wouldn't be doing anything bad AFAIK.
Also as a landlord you don't need a rental unit to be a primary residence anyway, because you can actually deduct way more than just your mortgage interest, and the property taxes I think are deductible as a biz expense that is independent of the $10k personal SALT limit too, so there is no incentive to do stuff like that unless the income was unreported also.
What is the legal plan you have on an annual basis? That sounds like something incredibly useful to have, where can you find one of those and how much do they cost? What do they cover?
Prepaid legal is a whole bucket of worms, usually sold by multilevel marketing type organizations. I'm sure there are some options that aren't a scam, but many are.
Legal plans are good if you don't feel like using Nolo or Rocket yourself and want someone to do it for you. Same as using H&R Block to have someone run TurboTax for you.
As with everything service related, it depends on the human providing the service.
The subscription (legal plan) brand itself is irrelevant. What all legal plans have is a network of contracted set-rate of fees for lawyers, to the benefit of their members. Not sure if the lawyers themselves get subscription fees or its fee per service, but either way the brand acts like a customer leadgen into pricier products/services.
The hard part is actually finding a good lawyer. Lawyers under the exact same legal plan can be wildly different.
By far the #1 thing to do when using legal plans (via company-provided benefit) is consulting with coworkers about their interaction with a lawyer.
Yelp/google may not be as useful because often they will reflect the feedback of a fee-paying customer
At a previous employer this was one benefit you could sign up for along with health insurance. I never used their services, so I can't say if they are good or bad.
They did a thing that was like a nurse line where you could just chat with an attorney about specific or general items. My plan did stuff like contract/lease review, real estate, traffic tickets, and other stuff.
Several services were included and a bunch of others were an additional, scheduled cost. I believe it cost ~$100/year, with additional (very reasonable) riders for adoption, elder care, etc.
This is true even of things like companies attempting to lay claim on your entire creative output. In most states in the USA court will enforce reasonable work-for-hire terms on work done on company time with company resources, or dealing directly with the company's business while employed with the company -- but any more than that and the contract is at risk of being unenforceable. The term of art in US and Canadian law is "unconscionable" -- the contract is so unreasonable, or was negotiated with such a vast power differential between the parties, that it would be silly and a moral outrage to enforce.
That said, the author of Nginx was sued by his former employer who tried to lay a claim to Nginx itself. So companies can and will pull a fast one -- hire an employment attorney if you are, or are afraid of finding yourself, in this situation.
There is a difference between what is written on the lease, and what can actually be enforced. The lease is not just one giant legal document. It's a series of hundreds or even thousands of individual components.
Let me give you my real-life example:
A few years ago, I signed a lease for a rental in California. Two things (clauses? not sure what the legal term is) in the lease are the key points for my anecdote:
- A lease break fee equal to half a month of rent
- Something about tenants being responsible for any legal fees incurred by the landlord/property owner
I broke my lease, and the half month of rent was taken out of my deposit. I moved out a day early. My landlord had immediately found a new tenant who wanted to move in that day, so it worked out for both of us.
Then my landlord did two things which really upset me and led to me spending ~20 hours over the next month or two reading about real estate laws and consulting multiple lawyers.
- He charged me for lightbulbs that had been burnt out when I first moved in. I replaced them with my own, then swapped them back. I told him this, and he still took it out of my deposit.
- He did not refund my deposit for nearly a month. When he did, it was $150 short of the reduced amount that I had expected. He didn't have an explanation for why, and wouldn't send it.
This led me to lots of googling, and discovery of the following:
1. The idea of a "lease break fee" does not exist in California landlord/tenant laws. It is not legally enforceable. If a lease has one, it doesn't actually mean anything. If I had broken my lease without the landlord's permission, he would not have been entitled to any damages, since he filled the vacancy immediately at an equal or greater monthly rate.
2. Landlords must return a portion of the security deposit within 21 days, with itemizations and deductions. If nothing is returned within 21 days, they must return the full amount, even if deductions are justified. If the matter goes to court, the concept of "treble damages" comes into play. A tenant could get up to 3x their deposit back, depending on how the judge feels (probably a gross oversimplification of small claims, but maybe not).
3. The clause about being responsible for legal fees actually goes both ways. My landlord would have been responsible for my legal fees on top of treble damages if we went to court. There is no way to know this based on just reading the contract, and not having an understanding of laws as they are on the books AND legal precedents for prior similar cases in California.
My landlord did not budge on returning my money when I texted him summaries of the above and links to evidence. He did budge after receiving a letter from a lawyer explaining everything in a more threatening tone.
I was ultimately not out anything but time, since I have a legal plan that I pay for on an annual basis. This was the perfect situation to use it, but it was still more work.
I do want to note something about the legal fees clause. I am pretty sure I am the first tenant who ever pushed back on it to my landlord. I don't know what the term for this is, but that clause has a very strong implication. At first glance, it seems to say "even if you're in the right, if you take me (the landlord) to court, you will have to pay for my lawyer, whether I win or lose".
This is what I thought it meant, and I wonder how many tenants who have been wronged in the past see a clause like that, and it just eliminates any ideas they may have about trying to enforce their tenant rights because they see it as financially impossible.
If I had to pay out of pocket for lawyer consultations and the letter, it wouldn't have really been worth it either. I would have roughly broke even. I would have done it anyways, though. I hope my former landlord will get deposits back to people on time in the future. Though I suppose he might not be willing to let people break their leases anymore, either.
I'm pretty sure he was overcharging on utilities, but I didn't push it at the time. I've been considering reporting him to the IRS because he illegally declared the home as his primary residence while not residing in it, which I found out from the title report. I'm not sure if anything would come out of it. I would bet a limb that he wasn't reporting any of his rental income.
Which leads me to a final thought: leases in California primarily benefit the tenant. You should never be afraid to break one IF the following is true: you know the landlord will be able to fill the vacancy if they put actual effort into it (they will need to prove as such to collect from you if they want to be lazy or spiteful), and the amount of time and money you would potentially spend in the worst case is less than whatever you would be responsible for in a scenario where they don't fill your vacancy, and they convince the judge that they tried really hard and they just couldn't do it (unlikely).